Art Lesson
by Tonko
Summary: Usopp and Nami nakamaship--could be shippy towards the end if you want. After Arlong Park, Usopp teaches Nami how to draw more than just maps.


Sanji relieved Usopp from the watch with a stretching yawn and a muffled explanation that there was some leftover freshly-squeezed juice in the galley, if he wanted it.

Usopp descended from the crow's nest eagerly. It was warm tonight, and something other than just water to drink would be a good way to end his watch.

Nami was in the galley already, which Usopp had expected--she had certainly been the reason Sanji had made anything special to drink in the first place. But her fruit-and-umbrella-decorated glass was abandoned mostly full on the table. She was standing over his workshop area, staring down at the mess of sketchbooks and papers he'd left there yesterday. Weapon designs and projectile formulas and doodles were strewn over almost the whole surface.

She looked up when he entered, self-consciousness flickering across her face, and she turned quickly to sit back at the table and bring the glass to her lips for a sip.

"It's a total mess, sorry," Usopp greeted, pretending he hadn't noticed anything unusual. It was generally safer that way. She gave him a somewhat absent smile, and he returned it with a smile of his own, picking up the plain mug Sanji had left him on the counter and moving over to where she'd just been standing.

He squatted down and pushed a few sheets around, separating the latest version of his newest formula out from the rest and tucking it back inside a notebook, where it had a slightly greater chance of being found easily after the next time Luffy barreled in here, or Zoro and Sanji started bickering.

He took a gulp of his drink--pineapple and mango and something fizzy, thank you, Sanji!--and started idly sorting out the rest. He had a few vaguely delineated piles done when he heard footsteps behind him, and then Nami was standing at his shoulder. He glanced up and then followed her eyes down to one of the piles.

Those papers were sketches of animals and plants, of rough landscapes and of Merry, and there were some, naturally, of his nakama, who of all the subjects were the most readily available to observe and inspire him. Those were mostly quick strokes of pencil or charcoal showing grins or silhouettes or the messy action of sparring or scuffling. But there were a few of his better ones visible too.

There was Zoro, asleep, the image only half-finished, his legs not completely drawn in, though Usopp was quite proud of the way he'd done the grain of the deck planks under him. There was Luffy, or rather Luffy's unruly hair, just visible past the edge of the crow's nest, and the stretching loop of his arm as he reached after his errant hat. There was Sanji, aggravated and sodden--Usopp thought that the wet cloth of his shirt had come out rather well--from when it hadn't been just the hat, but Luffy himself, who'd gone errant leaping over the side after a flying fish that no one else had spotted. There was Nami, clippers in hand, carefully trimming one of her mikan trees. Usopp had worked mainly on Nami herself in that one, so most of the leaves and branches were just suggested rather than fully drawn in.

That was the one Nami bent down to pick up, and she studied it long enough that he shifted uncomfortably and rubbed the back of his neck. "You can have it," he said uncertainly, "if you want?"

"Ah..." she glanced at him, and it seemed to him her eyes were wet, "thank you." She kept looking at it, and she worried gently at her lower lip for a few seconds before speaking again. "I used to draw, when I was little. I mean, pictures too, not just maps."

"Your hand is really steady," Usopp replied, not really surprised, "I bet you're great at it."

"No," she said. "Arlong... made me stop, and I never did after that. I tried a bit, the other night, but..." she rubbed her thumb against her fingers, then spread them all apart, staring at them with a resigned regret that depressed Usopp deeply. "I think it's gone."

Oh, no, it wasn't. Not if she still wanted to. But... Usopp chewed on the inside of his cheek a few seconds. "You used your own good paper for that?" he asked suddenly. He hadn't counted any of his own books or paper gone, and though paper was hardly a rarity, it was a limited resource when Merry was at sea. Nami certainly guarded her own supplies of heavy-duty stock and nautical journaling notebooks very carefully.

She glanced at him and tilted her head in an abbreviated nod, and he shook his head and let out a massive sigh of exaggerated disappointment. "Ah, Nami, Nami, Nami, let the Great Artist Usopp give you a lesson!" He grinned authoritatively, then knelt down and rummaged in one of his footlockers, finding the pencil case that had all the new pencils, the box of charcoals and pastels, and the fresh erasors. Next, he pawed through the piles of paper and pulled out anything that he didn't need, any used paper that still had a blank side. He stood up and handed the whole bundle to her, keeping a few sheets to himself. He pulled a pencil from a pocket on his overalls and pointed at the table with it.

Looking more amused and bemused than sad now, for which Usopp was vastly grateful, she sat, and he sat next to her, the smudged paper centered in front of him. He smoothed out a crinkle in one corner and tapped the point of his pencil on it.

"Now look, if you just wanna practice, it's good do it on old stuff like this--of course I always use the finest and most pristine paper, and all my work, which is considered revolutionary among art critics, by the way, is on display at the East Blue Capital Gallery and sells for ten million bellis a frame--but when you're knocking out little stuff, you don't want to worry about ruining good paper and wasting good ink, it'll just make it less fun."

She blinked, and he wondered if she was just too used to having to get everything right the first time. That did explain things. "So just, here, let's say you wanna draw a person, now," he sketched out a stick figure with an oval for a head, and began outlining a proper body, marking lines off where points lined up in a body's proportions, "see how the head on a regular person is about one seventh of the whole body..." he elaborated at length, and she listened closely.

She had an excellent eye, he'd known that already, she could see what he was pointing out, but it seemed her long years under Arlong had ground away whatever she'd taught herself as a child about just... drawing, when the mood struck, trying to get your feelings and your mind's eye where your real eyes could see it.

Accurate mapmaking made her line-copying skills amazing, but it hadn't provided her the muscle memory to show an object in motion, or the observational skills to understand how to make something have correct depth on a flat page. She understood topographical notation like it was instinct, but not body proportions.

All of that wasn't really _that_ important to drawing, not really--all Usopp really wanted was for her to have fun, like he did. Enough walls had certainly suffered under his paints and chalks when he'd been a kid to prove that he was hard-pressed to resist a blank canvas. But he figured that for someone used to rules and parameters for marking borders in certain ways, it was easier to show her a few new guidelines she could hold onto than to convince her to put aside the deeply-ingrained ones she'd worked by for so long.

She followed his examples with near-perfect accuracy, but Usopp suspected she would find it much harder without someone to copy from. Though, copying had been a much a part of his hand learning to draw as anything else. More importantly, she seemed to be heartened about the whole process again, and watching her pencil move deftly, if not skillfully, over the paper's surface as she tried a bigger figure on her own, he had a feeling she'd make up for lost time.

Already it seemed she had no hesitation about trying, erasing, and trying again, on these leftover sheets. The appeal of a fresh, clean page was undeniable, but the frustration when the lines didn't come together right was that much worse. Scraps didn't put any pressure on at all, certainly not like the marking up of a page in her log book, or the expensive paper she mapped their travels on.

"How do you make clothes do that?" she asked, leaning over to look more closely at a picture of a masked figure with a long nose and a billowing cape. She put the point of her pencil on a line he'd drawn to indicate a draping fold of cloth and traced its length.

"Keep remembering what's under them," he said, and turned the paper to draw in one of the remaining blank spots. A few lines and Sanji, from the chin down, appeared, and Usopp drew the lines of a tee shirt out slowly. "If you add these lines, you show that his shirt is a little loose, because it's hanging off his shoulders. And if you put these lines here, you can show how the fabric of the sleeve is gathered up at the shoulder seam."

"And the cape has a curve because of the wind blowing through it. Of course," she said, and drew a few swooping lines herself. She looked down at the sheet with a satisfied smile, and Usopp could almost see every bit of information being filed away for future use.

When they were both yawning too much to keep going any longer, she stood up and gathered the pile of scrap paper together to take with her. "It'll come back to you," Usopp said, rolling his pencil across his knuckles, then snagging it again and tapping the side of his nose with it. "I know it. You just need practice. And you know, sketchbooks are cheap at the right shops," he added helpfully.

"Thank you, Usopp," she said, and for a moment he was on the receiving end of a blinding smile that warmed him from nose to toes.

She left the galley, closing the door quietly behind her, and he sat for awhile, idly scratching at one of the sheets still on the table until Nami's smile beamed out at him again.


End file.
